Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) Practice Tests

If you audit information systems, you know the job is not about finding a single broken control. It is about judging risk, testing what actually happens, and reporting findings that management can act on. This practice set gives you 553 multiple-choice questions for the Certified Information Systems Auditor credential from ISACA, covering the full job practice from audit planning to data protection.

Every question comes with an explanation for each option, so a wrong answer teaches you just as much as a right one. The CISA is a professional, mid-level credential intended for IS audit, control, and security professionals. The exam contains 150 multiple-choice questions .

Candidates need a minimum of five years of professional experience in IS auditing, control, or security, with up to three years of substitution allowed for qualifying education or certifications. This practice set is organised into six sections that follow the official blueprint, with the largest domain, Protection of Information Assets, split into two sections so each area gets proper coverage. That structure lets you practise one domain at a time or work through the whole set in order.

Information System Auditing Process: 86 questionsThe first section covers the foundation of the whole credential, and it carries 21 percent of the exam weight. You will practise the audit charter and its approval, the audit universe, plan, and programme, risk-based prioritisation, auditor independence and objectivity, the four audit phases of planning, execution, reporting, and follow-up, the audit risk model across inherent, control, and detection risk, evidence reliability ranking, compliance versus substantive testing, walkthroughs, attribute versus variable sampling, materiality including qualitative factors, finding structure across condition, criteria, cause, effect, and recommendation, management versus auditor responsibilities, follow-up and escalation, computer-assisted audit techniques, SOC 2 Type I versus Type II, cloud audits, specialists, and post-implementation reviews. This is the ISACA mindset in practice, and it shapes how you approach every later domain.

Governance and Management of IT: 87 questionsThe second section tests whether IT is governed well, not just run well. Questions cover IT governance versus IT management, board accountability, IT steering committee composition and purpose, chief information officer and chief information security officer roles, data owner, custodian, and steward roles, COBIT domains and the COBIT 2019 system and framework principles, the policy, standard, procedure, and guideline hierarchy, segregation of duties, Balanced Scorecard perspectives, key performance, risk, and goal indicators and critical success factors, enterprise risk management integration, ITIL, ISO 38500, and COSO, strategic alignment, value delivery, risk appetite, auditor independence, and single and annualised loss expectancy calculations. A strong score here shows you can judge governance, not just describe it.

Information Systems Acquisition, Development, and Implementation: 90 questionsThe third section follows a system from idea to production. You will practise software development lifecycle phases, Waterfall versus Agile versus DevOps, business cases, feasibility study dimensions, project management office and steering-committee governance, project charters, requirements and traceability matrices, unit, integration, system, acceptance, and penetration testing, quality assurance versus quality control, change versus configuration management, segregation of duties, continuous integration and delivery approval gates, data mapping, cleansing, and migration reconciliation, mock migration, cutover and rollback plans, commercial off-the-shelf total cost of ownership, software-as-a-service SOC 2 and privacy review, shadow IT, version control, risk registers, return on investment and payback period, and post-implementation reviews. These are the controls that decide whether a new system helps the business or becomes a new risk.

Information Systems Operations and Business Resilience: 94 questionsThe fourth section is the largest single domain in the blueprint, at 23 percent, and it covers the day-to-day running of systems and their ability to survive disruption. Questions cover business continuity versus disaster recovery ownership and scope, business impact analysis first, recovery time and recovery point objectives and backup-frequency maths, full, incremental, and differential backups and restore order, hot, warm, and cold sites and reciprocal-agreement risk, the business continuity lifecycle and testing hierarchy from checklist through tabletop, simulation, parallel, and full interruption, ITIL incident, problem, change, and configuration management, service level and operating level agreements, configuration management databases, mean time between failures and mean time to repair and the availability formula, high availability versus fault tolerance, human safety first, annual testing, segregation of duties, offsite and immutable or air-gapped backups, job-scheduling alerts, physical and environmental controls, cloud continuity, and vendor accountability. This section rewards practical judgement under pressure.

Protection of Information Assets - Security Architecture and Infrastructure Controls: 93 questionsThe fifth section covers the architecture that keeps assets safe. You will practise defense in depth, least privilege, Zero Trust, identity and access management provisioning, de-provisioning, and access reviews, discretionary, mandatory, role-based, and attribute-based access control, multi-factor authentication and single sign-on, segregation of duties and privilege creep, firewall types and default-deny rules, demilitarized zone design, intrusion detection versus intrusion prevention, network segmentation, virtual private networks, honeypots, biometric false acceptance, false rejection, and crossover error rates, physical control functions, mantraps, server-room access logging, clean-agent fire suppression, and endpoint, mobile device management, bring-your-own-device, and internet-of-things controls including remote wipe and full-disk encryption. It is a wide technical section, and a strong score here shows real security breadth.

Protection of Information Assets - Data Protection, Privacy, and Security Operations: 103 questionsThe final and largest section covers data itself, privacy law, and security operations. It tests data lifecycle and classification across public, internal, confidential, and restricted levels, data ownership, Privacy by Design, privacy impact versus data protection impact assessments, GDPR rights and breach reporting, CCPA, HIPAA, and GLBA, data loss prevention, masking versus tokenization, retention and secure disposal, symmetric versus asymmetric encryption, hashing versus encryption, digital signatures, public key infrastructure, key management and rotation, transport layer security, certificate lifecycle, vulnerability management lifecycle and CVSS risk prioritisation, annualised loss expectancy, compensating controls, vulnerability assessment versus penetration testing, and the NIST incident response lifecycle, security information and event management versus security orchestration, evidence preservation, and containment priorities. This section alone will sharpen skills you will use in almost every audit.

How to use this practice setWork through one section at a time, then read every explanation, including the ones for questions you answered correctly. A correct guess can hide a gap, and the explanations will expose it before exam day does. Then return to the sections where your score was lowest and repeat them.

With 553 questions, you can practise several times and still meet fresh material, building both knowledge and pace. Who this set is forThis set is for IS audit, control, and security professionals preparing for the CISA credential, including internal auditors, IT auditors, security analysts, risk managers, compliance professionals, and consultants. It is also useful for experienced IT professionals who want a structured review of audit process, IT governance, system development, operations, resilience, security architecture, and data protection in one place.

Important Course DisclaimerThis is an independent practice resource. It is not produced by, sponsored by, or affiliated with ISACA, and it does not reproduce any official exam material. It is designed to help you practise, identify gaps, and approach your CISA exam with a clear picture of where you stand.

These materials are not unauthorized exam disclosures.